Donovan asserted he was targeted by Russian hit men as he sat in the Vassar Street parking lot of his Cambridge business office.

Sitting in the front seat of his minivan, Donovan said, he called police on his cellphone and accused his son James of laundering $180 million, of hiring two Russians to murder him, and of launching a simultaneous attack on his wife, Linda, at their home in Hamilton.

But, according to Attorney General Martha Coakley and testimony at Donovan's trial, Donovan shot himself in the abdomen, shot up his own minivan, kept a spent bullet in his mouth, rearranged a surveillance camera to prevent the taping of his hoax, and laid out the entire plan in a form of shorthand on the dinner menu of the Algonquin Club to which he belonged. Police found the "to-do" list in his pocket.

Foiled by the old "to-do list in the pocket"! You know those scientific types: always have to get everything in order.